A Laughing Matter
by Monocole
Summary: Imogen uses one of Constance's weaknesses to provide one of her pleasures.


**Author's Notes:** A few posts went around tumblr about the possibility of Constance Hardbroom actually being super ticklish and that being part of why she doesn't like touch. (Which makes sense: if you go without touch for a long enough period, out of not liking it to begin with, then you get more sensitive which would make ticklishness worse, and then you'd dislike touch even more.) I decided to write some interesting smut of it based on not just tickling being a kink, but having a kink for what it produces: laughter. Laugh kink anyone? And almost-auditory climaxing (Constance totally cheated)? Yeah, I don't know, I'm ridiculous but here you go. Finally got it up to ffnet!

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'Please. I want to hear it.'

'You'll just have to be more amusing, then, won't you?'

Imogen slammed her bottom against the door to close it and came at Constance with a stride more akin to a prowl.

'Please,' she said again. 'I hear you argue day in and day out. When do I get to hear this?'

'Perhaps you should say fewer things that encourage debate,' Constance drawled as she leaned against the standing chest of drawers. She looked down at Imogen in that imperious, impervious way that drove Imogen mad. Madder than she already was.

But she could tell she was getting there. She reached Constance and pressed flush up against her, craned up with her neck to whisper at the woman's ear. 'Please. If you do I'll tell you a secret.'

Constance laughed at that. As soon as she did, Imogen pulled her head down for a kiss. She nipped at the burgundy lips and lightly dragged with her teeth as they parted.

'Yes, that,' Imogen breathed. She kissed up Constance's long neck and smiled to see lipstick smudged along the trail; Constance had left her mark already.

'I only laughed for doubt of your having a secret worth sharing,' came her retort. Constance's hands remained noticeably apart from Imogen's frame, which was so close to her that no space remained between them.

'You're wrong,' Imogen growled into the jawline before her. She made her way back up to Constance's ear and gripped the lobe lightly with her lips, sucked at it for an instant and swiped at it with her tongue. Constance's hand swiped at her bottom hard enough that it left a sound and remained there, cupping Imogen's flesh with no intention to release it. Imogen smiled against Constance's ear. She was winning.

'Do you want to hear the secret?' she asked, soft as could be.

'Perhaps,' was the most Constance would allow. Still, the hand at Imogen's rear squeezed.

'I bet,' Imogen breathed near her ear, her words deliberately slow, 'that I could come from the sound of your laughter alone.'

In the next instant she felt the wall slam against her back and Constance was upon her, merged in every place in mattered, and Imogen was dizzy with the curves and the heat and the pressure of it. She had won: she had cracked through the Ice Queen barrier to the unstoppable woman beneath.

'You bet that, do you?' Constance asked against Imogen's lips—damnably, not touching. But her gaze was so intense that Imogen felt bare beneath it. 'And how would you test that? You're no comedian or clown, despite your ridiculous red nose.'

'Those don't make you laugh anyway,' Imogen declared. Her hand jumped to the swell of Constance's hip and then up, up into the danger zone of the woman's unfairly small waist. Her fingers were light; at the littlest twitch they might just—

'You'd risk your life for a wager?' Constance's voice rang dangerously in her ear.

'How else would we come to any conclusion? You know my hypothesis. It's up to you to test it.'

Imogen was cheating. She was using her lover's terms and adoration for the scientific process against her. And yet there it was, as well: a clear question of consent.

Constance laughed in her ear. It was rich and low, but not the mocking sort she so often received; it was authentic amusement. Imogen could feel the vibrations of it through her chest and pressed her arm up over Constance's shoulder and neck for support, freezing up at the delight of it.

She recovered enough to begin moving her fingers.

And then she had all five-foot-endless of Constance Hardbroom convulsing against her, unrestrained laughter in her ears and vibrating through her whole body. Constance wrapped both arms around Imogen's neck and gripped her, one hand in her hair and one clasping her shoulder with a considerable portion of her might.

It was a vice grip that Imogen never wanted to leave again. Anywhere her jittering fingers moved produced a reaction in Constance.

Her laughter began to sound so uninhibited and joyous that Imogen nearly cried to her it. She could hear the sound from the scalp that Constance gripped with her long fingers down to the torso fit snug against Constance's writhing body and down farther to the legs that held Constance up. With that sound alone, there could be no wrong in the world.

But there could be plenty of fire. Imogen felt the heat start in the soles of her feet, in the palm that gripped at Constance's shoulder, and knew that she was in for something potentially more than she could handle. The heat blossomed in her stomach and spread through her limbs, shot like lightning—like Constance's lighting—across her skin.

And Constance had her forehead against Imogen's neck, was laughing down into her clavicle, and the whole world consisted of this one stunning woman vibrating against her, and of the beautiful sound of her laughter, the most precious of rarities.

Imogen could feel the flush moving up her chest and prickling at her skin until it shot up her neck and joined the colour in her face. Surely her clothes could melt right off, could combust and leave them both bare and grasping, nothing between them but their skin.

Constance's laughter made her seem open and vulnerable in a way she so seldom was, in a way that was youthful and ebullient and utterly enthralling, that it was as if she was already lain before Imogen in the purest state she could be, clothed and all. If dresses of infinite fabric concealed the entity of Constance Hardbroom in all her complex glory, laughter set her free more than any undressing ever could.

All the same, the thought of Constance pressed against her nude and laughing as she was, held up by Imogen's leg at the apex of her own, made Imogen release an unintentional sound: a long, pent-up moan of pure ecstasy. It seemed to match the intensity of Constance's laughter, first loud and nearly braying then to spurts of breathless pleasure and all that came in-between.

At the sound of it Constance clung harder, this time with her legs as well as she sat astride Imogen's. Her face moved to Imogen's and nudged at it, pushed at it, not quite able to manage a kiss with the continuing spurts of laughter. The fingers in Imogen's hair tightened to the point of pain but it conflicted with the laughter so beautifully, and was such a juxtaposition of their normal interactions, that it only proved to set Imogen off more.

The heat of Constance against her and the heat inside her, driven by gratitude of Constance laughing, combined to push Imogen over the edge. She seemed to meet the precipice and fly ever higher, profoundly euphoric at the experience of Constance letting loose the most private part of herself; Imogen did not dive back down as she normally did but glided, kept aloft by the vibrations of Constance, until she met the ground.

And she had. As she remembered to breathe again she found herself on the floor next to the chest of drawers, Constance seated in her lap at a straddle and still enveloping her from head to thigh. There was hardly anything more pleasant than the full weight of Constance Hardbroom's body and character upon her.

Hardly anything, she decided, besides her lover's laughter.

Imogen gasped in breaths as she felt her body slowly calming and cooling. Constance was equally gulping in air as she sat astride Imogen. She dropped her neck down until her forehead touched Imogen's and kept it there, staring into her lover's eyes as they sought the breath they had lost.

When Imogen was confident that she could do it without losing her breath again, she brought her hands to Constance's now-dishevelled bun and pulled her in for a kiss, caressing with her lips that beautiful mouth that made such wondrous sounds. She folded her arms around the torso that allowed for such a rich melody, all wrapped in skin that was as responsive and sensitive as Constance herself claimed not to be.

And Constance kissed her back, as unrestrained as her laughter, because Imogen had doubly won.

'That was unexpected,' Constance said against her lips; Imogen could feel the words against her own. 'I firmly believed you to be lying through your teeth. How did you know? Have you done that before?'

Another time, those questions might have wounded like accusations. Now they were only curious as Constance sat nearly wide-eyed with wonder, her body still occasionally shaking out jitters.

'No,' Imogen answered honestly. 'It wouldn't work with anyone else.'

Constance snorted her disbelief, a smile quirking on lips smeared with burgundy lipstick.

'It wouldn't, Constance, I promise.'

'Are you so sure?'

'Yes. Because your laughter is the sexiest thing I have ever come across in my life, and you hardly ever share it, but today you didn't hold it back at all.'

'I hardly had a choice.'

'It sounded like pure joy, like you held all the happiness in the world and you decided to share it with me,' Imogen continued as if Constance had not spoken. Clearly her recent climax was making a poet out of her. 'That's what the sound of your laughter is to me. That's what it feels like when you smile at me the way you are right now, like there's nothing weighing it down. That's what it does to me—what you can do to me.'

If Imogen wasn't mistaken, Constance had gained some colour in her cheeks. She attacked Imogen's lips with hers, laced fingers in her hair, gripped her neck and jaw as if she never wanted to let Imogen escape again.

When Imogen's hand found its way under the woman's bunched dress and up her leg, Constance began to make different noises. They only got worse—or better, no, much better—when Imogen's other hand gripped at the peak of one generous breast.

Constance outright moaned across Imogen's swollen lips when her fingers found the place Constance ached most.

'I might have been wrong,' Imogen said with another swipe at the parted lips bobbing before her own. 'Laughter might be the second sexiest thing.'

'You're always wrong,' Constance gasped as her hands moved to Imogen's shoulders in order to hold herself up, 'but don't you dare stop.'

'You don't mind my fingers moving now?'

Constance groaned and closed her eyes, her neck bridging back in a stunning arc with her chin pointing up toward the stars. 'Shut—up—Miss—Drill.'

She rode home on Imogen's hand, gasping and groaning as she did, until she touched down to the sound of Imogen's laughter and slumped against the woman. They rested like that for a matter of minutes, Imogen cradling in her arms the strongest and most vulnerable woman she had ever met, before the cost of their positioning and the discomfort of their misarranged clothing got the better of them.

'To think some people say dancing is the most fun you can have with your clothes on,' Imogen remarked as Constance helped her to stand.

'Well I don't care for dancing and I've had quite enough of your clothes.' Constance turned toward her bed and tugged, not so gently, at Imogen's hand. 'So get out them and into bed.'

Imogen shot her a goofy grin and practically slid out of her clothing. 'How does it feel to have successfully proven a hypothesis?'

'The problem with science,' Constance said with a grin as she dropped her dress, 'is that it requires repetition to dispel the possibility of any mistrials and in order to confirm a conclusion with statistical analysis.'

'Which means in English?'

'Get in the damn bed, Imogen.'

Imogen didn't need to be told to come twice. Constance proved herself yet again to be ever the deliberate and dedicated scientist, and one with a great sense of humour.

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Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed it, please let me know; I always appreciate it! :D


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